Janet Yellen, vice chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, at the International Monetary Conference in Shanghai on June 3. / Eugene Hoshiko, AP

by John Waggoner, USA TODAY

by John Waggoner, USA TODAY

Janet Yellen is the nominee for Federal Reserve Chairman, succeeding current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Five things you might not know about Yellen, 67, currently serving as Fed Vice Chairman:

Yellen's first job: Assistant professor at Harvard, 1971. One notable pupil was Larry Summers, who went on to become president of Harvard and Yellen's chief rival for Fed Chairman.

She met her husband, George Akerlof, at the London School of Economics. Akerlof, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, wrote in his biographical note: ."Not only did our personalities mesh perfectly, but we have also always been in all but perfect agreement about macroeconomics."

Yellen was one of the few Federal Reserve governors who warned about the Great Recession. In December 2007, Yellen told fellow Fed leaders: "The possibilities of a credit crunch developing and of the economy slipping into a recession seem all too real."

Yellen has done well with her money: She reported investments worth $4.8 million in 2012, according to the New York Times.

If confirmed, she'd be the first female U.S. central bank chairman, but not the world's first. Russia and Malaysia both have female central bank leaders.